The first long-awaited news that I heard today is that the international adoption committee has now met (I think yesterday) for the first time in months to process the 442 pending adoption case files, including my own. At this meeting the first 20 files were processed i.e. up to file number 1970. I gather that in some cases documentation may need updating since the files having been collecting dust for most of this year. I have no idea when the committee will meet again, but at least a start has now been made.
The second piece of good news is that my not-for-profit business Himalayan Mosaics was finally registered today. So we can now sell handmade mosaics all over the world. I just need to get the website done now and identify international customers. But that doesn't stop us from selling at fairs in Kathmandu this Saturday and the following Friday. I am very excited for my work to be evolving from charity into not for profit business which seems to be the only way to go that assures beneficiaries of not only an income but also of retrieving their self confidence and dignity.
For both news items the bottom line is that nothing happens quickly in Nepal. Least of all international adoption.
Wednesday, 28 November 2007
Tuesday, 27 November 2007
Suraj
Suraj came to see me at the weekend. He is the elder of two brothers whom we had rescued back in November 2000. They had been found sleeping rough outside Tansen jai
l, obtaining scraps of food through the bars of the prison gate courtesy of their imprisoned mother. The two boys came to our refuge in Bhairahawa where they quickly began to blossom. Both are very good all rounders - academically, musically, at dance and sport. Suraj took the lead role in a community play that we organised at the refuge a couple of years ago. His part in the play's "dream sequence" (pictured) is very memorable.
l, obtaining scraps of food through the bars of the prison gate courtesy of their imprisoned mother. The two boys came to our refuge in Bhairahawa where they quickly began to blossom. Both are very good all rounders - academically, musically, at dance and sport. Suraj took the lead role in a community play that we organised at the refuge a couple of years ago. His part in the play's "dream sequence" (pictured) is very memorable.His progress took a jolt when his father turned up out of the blue a few months ago. He had been in different prison from his wife but freed after the Maoists burned down the jail at the end of last year; he is technically on the run but apparently had joined the Maoists himself. He arrived at the refuge on his motor bike, flashing money and showing off to his sons. Although told to go away he has been around the neighbourhood ever since. This put us in a doubly difficult position as Suraj's mother was insistent that the boys should never be handed over to their no-good father. And the boys had been signed over to our care by her, not him, and she expected them returned after her release.
Last week Suraj announced that he wanted to leave school (he's now 16 and very close to taking his final examinations) and if he couldn't work for us (not an option) he wanted to join his father. The local staff couldn't persuade him otherwise so he came to Kathmandu where he met the local Director here, Shailaja CM, and she talked him into changing his mind. By the time he got to me it had become an easy interview. He gave me a big hug before he left the room. This is another example of how our refuge children's parents mess their children's lives up leading to their coming to our care in the first place. Thereafter, given the chance, they continue to do so.
The news on the international adoption process has been encouraging this week. It appears that the files at our District office (Lalitpur) were due to be sent off yesterday and there is a prospect of a committee meeting this week to begin to look at all the files. That's what I heard from the refuge where our child came from. But the locals would tell you anything to make you happy....
Sunday, 25 November 2007
Sunday in Godawari
I shot this footage this morning of girls in my mosaic studio, peacefully chipping away at their artworks in advance of our forthcoming UK exhibition. They are working on subjects ranging from Saints (as depicted in the Irish Book of Kells) to UK football club logos. All of these girls are trafficking victims, sold once by their families into a life of every kind of abuse as “performers” inside Indian circuses. Now they are proving to everyone their real worth and they’re very happy. See:
This afternoon I paid a visit to our refuge just down the road to see four newly-arrived children. They are siblings of two girls who were already in our care, both circus returnees. One girl, Bipana, had been working in my mosaic studio but hadn't returned from the Dashain holiday (see earlier post on "Dashain problems"). Apparently she comes from a very poor family with very inadequate, drunken parents and she had felt compelled to stay at home 
to look after younger siblings. So our field staff retrieved Bipana along with the two siblings meaning that Bipana can return to the work that she loves and her two young brothers can go to a decent school. The other two children are brother and sister to Pramila. Their father has just died and the mother has been very ill, so again, in the absence of a safety net we have responded to a genuine need that will allow Pramila to continue her studies at school in Kathmandu. When I arrived at the refuge I found the children having a haircut. The girl looked worried. Given that the amateur hairdresser was refuge carer Dilu, I think her concern was probably justified.
Friday, 23 November 2007
Resurrection
In my 16th November post "Rural Education in Nepal" I showed a photograph
of a Lime Swallowtail butterfly that I had found dead outside my house. Laxmi, whom we rescued from an Indian circus in April 2004, has brought it back to life in mosaic. I wonder if she sees a parallel with her own situation, the resurrection she has experienced in becoming a mosaic artist after the living death she must have endured inside the circus?
of a Lime Swallowtail butterfly that I had found dead outside my house. Laxmi, whom we rescued from an Indian circus in April 2004, has brought it back to life in mosaic. I wonder if she sees a parallel with her own situation, the resurrection she has experienced in becoming a mosaic artist after the living death she must have endured inside the circus?
Wednesday, 21 November 2007
Kathmandu Zoo
My posts will be rather thin this week as Bev has had to go back to UK for a few days and I am left literally holding the baby. At fifteen months Alisha is quite a handful but a very delightful one at that. I have vowed that I will never complain about having a child. It used to rankle with me hearing others in the past sharing their difficulties with their children unaware of how greater was the pain of childlessness in some in their audience. One particularly thoughtless woman once told Esther that she was lucky not to have had children.
Today I distracted Alisha with a trip to the zoo, this being her first ever. I am not a fan of zoos at all but I do still remember clearly my first trip to the zoo and the positive impression it made upon me. Maybe this visit, and subsequent ones, will serve to imprint upon Alisha an awareness for animals at an early stage. The zoo was nowhere near as bad as I had expected it to be. OK, it was very Nepali with some animals in the wrong compounds - the buck deer (as depicted on our Christmas card mosaic) were labelled as being "barking deer". Other compounds had no guide signs at all. There was a very splendid mountain partridge (chukka), which I recognised from a previous mosaic that one of the girls had made, wandering around in another cage apparently unidentified. Some signs were in English, some in Nepali and so on...
Most shocking of all was the shrieking of the pupils in the visiting school parties that was potentially so disturbing for animals without any effort being made at teacher restraint. And in spite of the signs outside the zoo asking visitors not to tease the animals, clearly some teenagers were causing some provocation as they went along. Nepal is a very benign and easy-going place to live but this teasing seems to be endemic. It also seems to go hand in hand with stigma and what the animals have to endure at Kathmandu zoo mirrors a cruelty that in our experience disabled kids, street kids, prison kids and former circus kids have to live with in their daily lives.
Today I distracted Alisha with a trip to the zoo, this being her first ever. I am not a fan of zoos at all but I do still remember clearly my first trip to the zoo and the positive impression it made upon me. Maybe this visit, and subsequent ones, will serve to imprint upon Alisha an awareness for animals at an early stage. The zoo was nowhere near as bad as I had expected it to be. OK, it was very Nepali with some animals in the wrong compounds - the buck deer (as depicted on our Christmas card mosaic) were labelled as being "barking deer". Other compounds had no guide signs at all. There was a very splendid mountain partridge (chukka), which I recognised from a previous mosaic that one of the girls had made, wandering around in another cage apparently unidentified. Some signs were in English, some in Nepali and so on...
Most shocking of all was the shrieking of the pupils in the visiting school parties that was potentially so disturbing for animals without any effort being made at teacher restraint. And in spite of the signs outside the zoo asking visitors not to tease the animals, clearly some teenagers were causing some provocation as they went along. Nepal is a very benign and easy-going place to live but this teasing seems to be endemic. It also seems to go hand in hand with stigma and what the animals have to endure at Kathmandu zoo mirrors a cruelty that in our experience disabled kids, street kids, prison kids and former circus kids have to live with in their daily lives.
Sunday, 18 November 2007
An Auspicious Day
The first consignment of mosaics left my Kathmandu mosaic studio yesterday en route to the exhibition that we will be holding in Skipton, North Yorkshire, UK on the 4th December. The excitement of the girls was tangible and sweet to witness. It must have been amazing for them to be preparing for such an event so soon after having been trapped inside miserable Indian circuses. The central exhibit will be the eight auspicious symbols of Tibetan Buddhism. For the unitiated, like me, they are:
two fish - symbols of happiness and utility
the white parasol - keeps away the heat of evil desires
two fish - symbols of happiness and utility
seashell - symbol of blessedness to the right
lotus - pledge of salvation and symbol of divine origin
vessel - treasury of all desires
victory - banner erected on Mt Meru, centre of the Buddhist cosmos
wheel - eight spokes represent the eight fold path
endless knot - mystic diagram representing endless rebirths
Whatever one makes of the religious significance of these, or otherwise, I think they look great and the girls have really excelled themselves in subject material that they can relate to. I am very tempted to buy these myself to celebrate the auspicious day when we complete our international adoption process with Alisha. That will be something that she too can treasure in later life and always have as a valued, and no doubt much-needed, reminder of her native land.
Saturday, 17 November 2007
Charity Founders meet in Nepal
Whenever you hear of a charity with a personal name attached, it is often the case that there is a tragedy (usually a death) underlying its founding. Such is the case with The Esther Benjamins Trust, named after my first wife who died so tragically back in 1999 (see the link to the story of the Trust in my own words at the bottom of the page). Last evening I had dinner in Kathmandu with Richard Carss who is on a flying visit to Nepal. He founded the Zoe Carss Education Trust after the death of his daughter in Thailand in 1996. Just prior to her visit there she had been teaching as a gap year student (age 18) in Nepal. Uncannily - and we see so many of these overlaps - I discovered that the school that she had taught at is a mere 200 yards from my home here in Godawari.
Richard's UK-based Zoe Carss Education Trust now funds education projects in South Africa (Richard's wife is a South African) and in Nepal. For the last couple of years the Trust has funded our schools' capital development project in Makwanpur and adjacent districts. Funds have been spent on enhancements at under-resourced government schools in villages within those districts. But as I wrote in a previous post, I now have serious reservations about such activities, attractively tangible as they might be in a land where so much development funding seems to vanish into the ether. My misgivings are based upon the pathetic quality of the education in these schools and a fundamentally flawed rote learning system. We can't repair these deep fault lines and providing funds to such schools only seems to condone unacceptable standards. On an entirely personal front, I am no longer convinced that I wish to remember Esther (and now Zoe) through the construction of school compound walls and toilet blocks. Moreover, as charitable organisations I feel we should be at the cutting edge of social change, setting an example for others to follow.
I discussed with Richard my latest idea of setting up a special school in Kathmandu dedicated entirely to serving the victims of child trafficking. This would pull together two of our initiatives that are currently underway as pilot projects. In Bhairahawa we have been running educational bridging courses that are designed to fast track returnees (including the pictured girls) who have no previous education into school at a level appropriate to their age. This course was set up by us last May in response to the returnees' request for a proper education (rather than a half-hearted non-formal education p
rovision) and a wish not to join school and sit in class with infants. In parallel in Kathmandu we have been running an art workshop for returnees that has been teaching ceramics and mosaic techniques to older girls. This started in September and we have been enjoying the support of UK volunteer and professional potter Alex Hunter in this exciting development that will lead to jobs within the arts and crafts sector in Nepal. We see great merit in collocating both activities so that returnees have the option to mix their interests and see which pathway suits them better. A school in Kathmandu would be more readily accessible to Western volunteer teachers, both artistic and academic, and would put an appropriate distance between the students and their families in rural areas who only spoil their daughters' chances in life (again) by interfering in our provision.
I have shared this vision with Richard and we concur on the desirability of moving on to a higher level. It remains to be seen exactly what shape that partnership will take.
Sitting at the dinner table last evening and discussing our respective personal bereavements it inevitably became quite emotional. I was reminded by that once again of how gut-wrenching and fresh that sense of loss remains. But rather than being a pair of sad, inward looking people we find ourselves both here in a foreign land trying to make it a better place for some of the country's most vulnerable children. The human response to trauma can be quite paradoxical and perhaps it is our capacity to rise above this that sets us apart from animals and reflects the divine that is within us all, whether we choose to recognise it or not. The divine that happens to be saluted through the Nepali routine greeting of "Namaste".
Richard's UK-based Zoe Carss Education Trust now funds education projects in South Africa (Richard's wife is a South African) and in Nepal. For the last couple of years the Trust has funded our schools' capital development project in Makwanpur and adjacent districts. Funds have been spent on enhancements at under-resourced government schools in villages within those districts. But as I wrote in a previous post, I now have serious reservations about such activities, attractively tangible as they might be in a land where so much development funding seems to vanish into the ether. My misgivings are based upon the pathetic quality of the education in these schools and a fundamentally flawed rote learning system. We can't repair these deep fault lines and providing funds to such schools only seems to condone unacceptable standards. On an entirely personal front, I am no longer convinced that I wish to remember Esther (and now Zoe) through the construction of school compound walls and toilet blocks. Moreover, as charitable organisations I feel we should be at the cutting edge of social change, setting an example for others to follow.
I discussed with Richard my latest idea of setting up a special school in Kathmandu dedicated entirely to serving the victims of child trafficking. This would pull together two of our initiatives that are currently underway as pilot projects. In Bhairahawa we have been running educational bridging courses that are designed to fast track returnees (including the pictured girls) who have no previous education into school at a level appropriate to their age. This course was set up by us last May in response to the returnees' request for a proper education (rather than a half-hearted non-formal education p
rovision) and a wish not to join school and sit in class with infants. In parallel in Kathmandu we have been running an art workshop for returnees that has been teaching ceramics and mosaic techniques to older girls. This started in September and we have been enjoying the support of UK volunteer and professional potter Alex Hunter in this exciting development that will lead to jobs within the arts and crafts sector in Nepal. We see great merit in collocating both activities so that returnees have the option to mix their interests and see which pathway suits them better. A school in Kathmandu would be more readily accessible to Western volunteer teachers, both artistic and academic, and would put an appropriate distance between the students and their families in rural areas who only spoil their daughters' chances in life (again) by interfering in our provision.I have shared this vision with Richard and we concur on the desirability of moving on to a higher level. It remains to be seen exactly what shape that partnership will take.
Sitting at the dinner table last evening and discussing our respective personal bereavements it inevitably became quite emotional. I was reminded by that once again of how gut-wrenching and fresh that sense of loss remains. But rather than being a pair of sad, inward looking people we find ourselves both here in a foreign land trying to make it a better place for some of the country's most vulnerable children. The human response to trauma can be quite paradoxical and perhaps it is our capacity to rise above this that sets us apart from animals and reflects the divine that is within us all, whether we choose to recognise it or not. The divine that happens to be saluted through the Nepali routine greeting of "Namaste".
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